


a hora é agora

by lethargicProfessor



Series: tintype afterimage [5]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 07:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10635444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lethargicProfessor/pseuds/lethargicProfessor
Summary: Tyki wonders, sometimes, what life would have been like if they hadn’t been chosen.





	

Tyki wonders, sometimes, what life would have been like if they hadn’t been chosen. 

Had the Millennium Earl not come into their lives, would he and Sheril still live on the streets? Would one of them have made it out, made something of themselves?

(He doubts it, but Sheril always said he had an active imagination as a child.)

He watches his brother from the second floor, comfortable in the midst of too-fake smiles and sickeningly expensive clothes in a way that makes Tyki’s skin crawl. It isn’t that he doesn’t appreciate his current situation – the Earl has been good to them, and Tyki has more now than he ever did in the past, but sometimes he feels like the price for having such comforts is too high for his tastes.

He wonders what the people fawning around his brother would say if they knew where they had come from, before Sheril Kamelot had left behind the slums of Portugal, before he left the name Mikk behind.

_It is more dignified_ , he had said, struggling to tie a cravat in near-darkness, in the early days when they first awakened as Noah. _We’re special, Tyki. We’re better. We need to show the world that we’re better._

“Better than what?” Tyki muses into his champagne as the soft sounds of a piano and muted conversations drift through the hall. He had asked that question over the years with various answers in response, but none that really felt right.

He wonders, even now, if there _is_ a right answer out there.

* * *

Tyki never enjoyed the life his brother had so quickly adopted. He didn’t care for the gossip and the politics, the passive aggression and backstabbing that seemed to constantly swirl around his brother now.

And while he didn’t miss the hunger pangs or the uncertainty of not having a roof over his head, he felt twinges of nostalgia every now and again. He remembered sleeping under the stars on summer nights, listening to his brother spin stories around them until he drifted off. He remembered the distant sound of train whistles, the sound of home (as much as it could be considered one), and the warm smells of cooking in a kitchen he couldn’t quite picture.

He remembered strains of music, of a woman singing while she cooked, though her face was never clear. Sheril never mentioned her, even back then, but what little he managed to pry out of his brother was soft and fond and sad.

If their mother was a sore subject, their father was nigh unmentionable. Tyki suspected that his brother’s insistence in shedding his old name was in part due to their father, but whatever issue Sheril had with the man was never something he was privy to.

He grew up with Sheril as his only family, and as a child longed for a large family like the ones he saw wandering the bright streets.

The longing disappeared as he grew; Sheril did his best to provide for him, but Tyki knew his elder brother resented having something tying him back. It would have been easier to leave Tyki behind and try to find something better abroad, but the sense of obligation never let Sheril take that first step.

It was fine. Tyki understood, and knew his brother loved him, just as he loved his brother, but it was hard to remember that when the hunger pangs gnawed at them through the long nights.

(When Tyki first got sick, before either one knew what was coming, he saw through Sheril’s worry the faintest sliver of hope. If Tyki died, Sheril would be free to go where he pleased.)

The stigmata burned, the pain indescribable, and Sheril was unable to do much for his brother to ease his suffering. They hardly had money to feed themselves, and the cost of a doctor would be far too much for their meager savings.

Not long after Tyki succumbed to the stigmata in full, Sheril followed. Their screams could be heard across the ramshackle buildings and homes, but no one came to their aid.

After what felt like ages, they woke to the Earl, and thousands of years’ worth of memories to digest. Sheril took to their new life easily, throwing himself into his new role with gusto, and even now, so many years later, acted as if their life before had never happened.

Tyki hesitated.

He balanced his old life and new on a line so thin he could barely see it at times, casting away his new titles and fine clothes to return to the mines, taking odd jobs with friends – real, _human_ friends who had no idea how vast the world around them was.

He went through nights where the hunger made his stomach roil, and where the cold was chased away only by the warmth of his friends. He would joke with them and share meals, barely scraps with the pittance they made in the day’s work, and leave them to return to the Earl. He would command legions of monsters, of akuma ready to wreak havoc across towns on the Earl’s bidding, and return in the mornings with it all neatly tucked away behind him.

Dark and light, each one pushing just a little more for dominance.

Tyki stared at his reflection, eyes darting to the looming figure behind him, the shadow of Noah that never seemed to go away.

It grinned, a wide, jeering smile with far too many teeth.

(It knew who what would win out in the end.)


End file.
